08.19 - Material existence - Linear progress or cyclic process?

Our mainstream culture makes us believe that life at the material level is linearly progressive and so we can make things better materially. This belief is so deeply ingrained in our culture that we hardly ever scrutinize or even notice it.

However, this belief is not reflected in the course of nature. Widespread in nature are demonstrations of not linear progress, but cyclic process. Within each generation, trees grow and shed leaves in cycles. From one generation to another, life forms repeat the same cycles: creation, growth, maintenance, reproduction, deterioration and destruction. Overhead, the planets move about in cycles. The phases of the moon are cyclic, as are the alteration of seasons. Even our units of time are cyclic. The Bhagavad-gita (08.19) underscores that such cyclic changes of repeated creation, maintenance and destruction are an inherent, invariable feature of material existence.

Of course, we humans have more free will than other species. So we can, if we so desire, try to militate against this cyclic nature. We can temporarily bend nature through human-made technology and temporarily coax history to support our pet notion of linear progressthrough selective rewriting.

But we just cant change the cyclic nature of our own lives: we begin with childhood and end in the second childhood, old age, where we often become helpless like children. Further, we cant change the cyclic nature of the repetition of birth and death.

Gita wisdom, therefore, urges us to use our free will not to futilely bend nature from cyclic to linear, but to transcend material existence by linear progress in spiritual life. When we connect lovingly with Krishna through devotional service, then and then alone do our hopes for linear progress actualize; by his mercy, we are raised straight upwards to his eternal abode.